Ok, I have a new pet peeve regarding popular and over-used “phrases-of-the-day”. Verbal crutches that people use over-and-over and that they copy from each other just tell me how limited their vocabulary and their intelligence truly are.

One of my BIGGEST “pet peeve” comments is when the media or other people talk about another person getting “closure” in a loved one’s death. I’ve written about this before. Sorry, people that state this, I hate to burst your teeny tiny minuscule little idiotic bubble (well, maybe I don’t hate bursting it since it’s such a stupid thing to say), but there IS no closure when someone near and dear and much beloved dies. If you say this, you have either never truly loved someone that has died or you’re just cold-hearted about death. A grieving person learns to move forward. They learn to enjoy life in spite of their pain and grief. They do NOT however get closure ever. NEVER. End of subject. Period. The end.

The 2nd one that irritates me is one I’ve never written about … but at some point in time I may say more … or I may simply just state it here and now alone. I can’t say for sure.

Anyway, I can’t STAND it when people use the worn out and over-used: “it is what it is”. No. Nothing just “is”. You can always make a choice to accept, move forward, adjust, and make changes to whatever “is”. Someone thinking that something just “is” illustrates to me an extremely defeatist attitude. An individual either is accepting, adjusting, and improving their lives … or they are stagnating and going backward. So if it just “is what it is” … then stagnation has set in … and that’s not something Roy or I will ever allow in our lives. If we don’t like something that “is”, we’ll adjust it as needed to an “isn’t” and move forward in life.

Then finally … my newest “pet peeve” crutch phrase is this over-used phrase-of-the-minute: to “reach out” to someone for information (or whatever). I guess it’s the new fancy way of saying someone is asking for information, help, whatever. How about just ask or comment? In my mind, when someone “reaches out”, it’s a physical thing. A hand reaches out and physically touches something … but comments and questions simply cannot physically do that. Remember the Diana Ross song “reach out and touch … somebody’s hand … make this world a better place … if you can”? That was talking about something physical and not about asking for information or advising someone of something.

Believe me when I say here that if I “reach out”, I’m going to be touching something physically … be it to pick up an item or to touch someone I love and care about or to strike out at someone that has physically put me or those I care about in danger. It may be a “nice” reaching out to touch, for example, my husband or my children … or it may be a “fight back” reaching out against a would-be attacker. I won’t just “reach out” randomly however. If I’m “reaching out”, the person will know why. I won’t be cloaking it in politically-correct mumbo-jumbo terminology.

I guess my point in all of this is that I simply want to ask the following questions. Why does everyone feel they need to be all fancy-dancy with their words and make up things like:

1. “getting closure” in a death?

2. being too lazy to change or fix or adjust to what they can in life, therefore dubbing “it is what it is”?

3. “reaching out” in words when really they are just communicating, asking, commenting, stating, etc?

Is liberal culture trying to now be so politically correct (gag me) that it can’t accept that people grieve following the death of a loved one like I do for my son, Keegan, who died 14 years ago this coming May 30th (even though I’ve learned to adjust, carry on, and move forward in life, changing how I operate in life) … or that it can’t accept that something isn’t “just what it is” and situations can in fact be handled, changed, corrected, and/or overcome … or that it has become so afraid of asking, communicating, commenting, stating, taking a stand, whatever, that it must therefore “reach out” just in case the other party might get their fragile feelings hurt and go into a rampage and/or pout about someone not being PC? It’s pathetic … plain, flat, and simple.

Guess what? Here’s my not-so-humble and un-PC opinion and philosophy.

ACCEPT LIFE WITH ALL IT GIVES YOU!

HAVE A BACKBONE!

DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES!

HAVE AN OPINION!

BE BOLD!

Life is messy. Things happen. People grieve. Individual situations change and grow as life is lived. Help and information is requested. Opinions are stated.

Carry on and do what it takes to get through whatever challenges come … but embrace the ups-and-downs and adjust your life with them so that you move forward in life rather than stagnate.

I’ve said this before, but I work in the government sector. It’s not particularly my choice, but with the economy of the past few years and the crushing taxes put on private businesses, it’s what was paying the bills as we struggled to build our own private business. I was tired of being laid off from “company jobs”. After that happening 3 times in 5 years, I decided that I would work on my own business dream while holding down a government job.

Don’t get me wrong … I’m grateful that I have work. I know that I do it well and I do it with care, offering good service to the State of California taxpayers. However, the mentality of the majority of people that work in government jobs never ceases to not only amaze me but also to appall me.

Government agencies, in my maybe not-so-humble opinion, are bloated and supervisor-heavy. Everyone wants a title. No one wants to actually work. Therefore, the vast majority of “managers” in government do not know how to manage work or supervise people. They “manage by committee” and that mentality is ridiculous because no one knows how to make a decision. Additionally, the majority of them attempt to squelch any initiative or ingenuity. Everyone is expected to march in lock-step, so that when someone tries to take initiative or when they don’t fit into their little box (or is it “prison cell”) that they’re supposed to occupy or when something goes wrong with whatever program is being implemented, the workers (they’re the ones that are not part of the management “in club”) get thrown figuratively under the bus. That mentality goes all the way up to the idiot White House Occupier, BO, who throws anyone under the bus he can, attempting to not take any blame for anything.

This of course happened to me very recently. I took some initiative as instructed by management and was later batted down for it. The problem for them with doing something like that to me … and with me in particular overall … is that I do not fit into their little box. I have too many prickly edges to fit in a box. Since I was little, I never adhered to the rule of there being a box that I was supposed to fit into. If I was ever told that, I took whatever was handy to said box and knocked the box down.